They call themselves The Brethren: three disgraced
former judges doing time in a Florida federal prison. One was sent up for
tax evasion. Another, for skimming bingo profits. And the third, for a career-ending
drunken joyride. Meeting daily in the prison law library, taking exercise
walks in their boxer shorts, these judges-turned-felons can reminisce about
old court cases, dispense a little jailhouse justice, and contemplate where
their lives went wrong.

Or they can use their time in prison to get very
richvery fast. And so they sit, sprawled in the prison library, furiously
writing letters, fine-tuning a wickedly brilliant extortion scam while
events outside their prison walls begin to erupt. A bizarre presidential election
is holding the nation in its gripsand a powerful government figure is
pulling some very hidden strings. For The Brethren, the timing couldnt
be better. Because theyve just found the perfect victim .

1722: A second Dark Age looms. An asteroid has
devastated the Earth, called down by dire creatures who plot against the world
of men. The brilliantsome say madIsaac Newton has taken refuge
in ancient Prague. There, with his young apprentice Ben Franklin, he plumbs
the secrets of the aetheric beings who have so nearly destroyed humanity.

But their safety is tenuous. Peter the Great marches
his unstoppable forces across Europe. And half a world away, Cotton Mather
and Blackbeard the pirate assemble a party of colonial luminaries to cross
the Atlantic and discover what has befallen the Old World. With them sails
Red Shoes, a Choctaw shaman whose mysterious connections to the invisible
world warn him that they are all moving toward a confrontation as violent
as it is decisive .